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Boumediene v. Bush

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in Boumediene v. Bush, the latest in a series of cases seeking to establish the scope of the rights of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. One of the issues before the Court in this case is whether non-citizens detained as enemy combatants have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. To put that in the simplest terms possible, the issue is whether the US government has to give a reason to a judge as to why it is holding a person in prison, or if it can simply lock the detainees up (for what is now six years and counting) without providing any justification whatsoever.

Marty Lederman has this post at Balkinization summarizing the legal issues in Boumediene. But it was his description of the appellants that stands out the most to me:

They were not captured fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan or, like Hamdi, surrendering a weapon there. Instead, they are Algerians who immigrated to Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990?s. Five of them are Bosnian citizens. On 9/11/01, each was living with his family in Bosnia. None is alleged to have waged war or committed belligerent acts against the United States or its allies. According to the Boumediene brief, they were arrested by Bosnian police in October 2001, purportedly on suspicion of plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. But the Bosnian authorities had no evidence for this charge; instead, they acted under pressure from U.S. officials, who threatened to cease diplomatic relations with Bosnia if the petitioners were not arrested. On January 17, 2002, the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acting with the concurrence of the Bosnian prosecutor, ordered the petitioners released because a three-month international investigation (with collaboration from the U.S. Embassy and Interpol) had failed to support the charges on which the petitioners had been arrested. On the same day, the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina, established under the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement and staffed by judges from several European countries, issued an order forbidding the prisoners? removal from Bosnia. Later that day, however, as the Boumediene petitioners were being released from a prison in Sarajevo, Bosnian police acting at the behest of U.S. officials (and in defiance of the Human Rights Chamber?s order), re-seized them and delivered them to U.S. military personnel, who transported them to Guantanamo, where they have been held for the past six years, without contact with their families.

These are the persons whom our government believes that it can continue to detain without so much as stating the reasons why they can do so before a judge. The fact that we continue to have any moral authority at all in this world is a testament to every executive administration this country has had prior to January 2001.

Full post as published by Traditional Notions on December 05, 2007 (boomark / email).